1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus, a printing method and a printing program product and, more specifically, a printing apparatus, a printing method and a printing program product with job security function.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network printers that can be connected to a plurality of personal computers (hereinafter simply referred to as “printers”) often have a so-called job security function. The job security function realizes the following operation. When a print job data is transmitted from a personal computer to a printer with a password, the printer does not immediately prints the job data but prints the data out only after the password is entered from, for example, an operating unit.
Because of this job security function, the print data is output only after the password is entered. Therefore, the trouble that information of high confidentiality, for example, is printed-out immediately and possibly exposed to others, can be prevented even when the printer is shared by a plurality of users.
The job security function in accordance with the prior art, however, has the following problem. In the conventional job security function, the target print job is output only after the entrance of the password. Therefore, if a job is forgotten and left unprinted, the print job data is left in a HDD (Hard Disk Drive) or the memory such as the RAM in the printer, and such forgotten print job data would be accumulated successively.
When the accumulated print job data should occupy the memory, the printer performance degrades and, in a worst case, some functions would become unavailable.